Sitting in a quiet carriage of a train to Gatwick Airport, my thoughts turned to the women taking this same route back to Ireland after travelling to the UK for abortions. I wondered if anyone was on this train for that very purpose. More than 170 000 women have travelled abroad from Ireland seeking abortions since 1980.

Having arrived at Gatwick Airport, I met two volunteers working with the London-Irish Abortion Rights Campaign who were taking the same flight to Dublin as me.

How did Northern Ireland lawmakers carve out an anti-abortion ‘ghetto’ within the UK?
Northern Ireland remains a blind spot for equality for women and members of the LGBTIQ community. Will Ireland’s abortion referendum change this?

Stephanie Williamson
11 June 2018

More than two weeks have passed since Ireland’s historic abortion referendum was won by a groundswell of grassroots feminist activism. A large majority (66.4%) voted to repeal the country’s eighth constitutional amendment, opening the door to proposed legislation to allow abortions up to 12 weeks.

Huge numbers of repeal campaigners and voters were young women – with a staggering 94% increase in the turnout of women aged 18-24, compared to the 2016 general election. The result reflected a frank rejection of decades of misogyny and the suffocating grip of church and state on women’s rights.

Belfast woman to challenge NI abortion laws in High Court
Decision follows ruling by British supreme court on legality of situation in North

June 7, 2018
Amanda Ferguson

A Belfast woman who travelled to Britain for an abortion is to take a case to the High Court in her home city after campaigners lost a UK supreme court appeal over the legality of Northern Ireland’s abortion laws.

Supported by Amnesty International, Sarah Ewart, who travelled for an abortion after being told her baby would not survive, said she was seeking a formal declaration that the North’s laws on abortion were incompatible with human rights law.

BELFAST: Abortion rights activists in Northern Ireland called on the British government to end what one group described as the province’s “Victorian-era abortion ban” after neighbouring Ireland voted by a landslide to liberalise its laws.

Voters in the once deeply Catholic Irish republic were estimated to have backed a referendum by more than two-to-one, according to two exit polls, prompting campaigners across the border to step up their demands for change.

Change to North’s abortion laws recommended by working group
Report supports alowing terminations in cases of fatal foetal abnormality

April 25, 2018
Amanda Ferguson

A justice and health working group has recommended a change to Northern Ireland’s abortion laws to allow terminations in cases of fatal foetal abnormality.

A report, published on Wednesday following a Freedom of Information request, was commissioned in 2016 by the then Stormont health and justice ministers, with a view to informing Executive policy deliberations.

Belfast city council has passed a motion condemning the arrest and attempted prosecution of women in Northern Ireland who procure abortion pills online.

The motion denounced cases such as the one involving a mother who obtained abortion pills for her 15-year-old daughter after her child was raped. The mother faces prosecution in a court case in Belfast next month.

The UK breaches the rights of women in Northern Ireland by unduly restricting their access to abortion, a UN Committee has found.

"Denial of abortion and criminalisation of abortion amounts to discrimination against women because it is a denial of a service that only women need," said the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women.

Amnesty International has welcomed today’s passing of a motion at Sinn Féin’s Ard Fheis which extends the party’s support for abortion access to when a woman or girl’s physical or mental health is at risk.

The motion also reasserts their opposition to the criminalisation of women who make the decision to have an abortion. It also commits the party to developing a women’s health policy, which takes into consideration the recommendations of the Citizens’ Assembly on access to abortion in the Republic of Ireland.